Apart from primary outcomes, there was no difference in mortality (
Figure 4). Data were not homogeneous and complete enough to perform a meta-analysis for operative time, anesthesia time, and length of hospital stay. However, three investigations reported significantly shorter mean operative times for the SVTLB group: 32.5 ± 18.5 min versus 50.8 ± 18.4 min (
p = 0.004) in the study by Kurihara et al. [
16]; 38 min versus 77 min (
p < 0.001) in the study by Guerrera et al. [
18]; 27.4 ± 14.4 min versus 36.4 ± 15.1 min (
p = 0.008) in the study by Grott et al. [
23]. Conversely, Jeon et al. [
13] reported no significant difference (
p = 0.25) in operative time, although they found a median value of anesthesia time of 66 min (IQR 62–82) for SVTLB versus 83 min (IQR 69–99) in the MVTLB group (
p = 0.025). On the other hand, Grott et al. [
23] reported a significantly higher anesthesia induction time for the SVTLB group (24.1 ± 15.6 versus 13.9 ± 9.7 min,
p < 0.001). With reference to the length of hospital stay, significantly shorter times in the SVTLB group were reported by Kurihara et al. [
16] (1.0 ± 1.3 versus 10.0 ± 34.7 days,
p < 0.001), Guerrera et al. [
18] (3.1 versus 6.7 days,
p = 0.0002), and Grott et al. [
23] (3.8 ± 1.6 versus 5.7 ± 2.0 days,
p < 0.001).
Figure 4. Forest plots of mortality rate. Squares represent point estimates of mortality rate from each study reporting results eligible for analysis. Solid lines represent a 95% confidence interval (CI). The diamond represents the overall pooled effect from the included studies [
13,
15,
16,
18,
19,
23].
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